Love's Labours Won
by RuthanneReid
Summary: The long awaited epilogue for a very special person: Cumber, from Dominion: Reprise. Warning: It's a love story. There be sap ahead. Hey, you gotta have at least ONE in your portfolio, right?
1. Chapter 1

_(Author's note: This story takes place after Dominion: Reprise. If you haven't read that fic, then this won't make a whole lot of sense to you. :) If you have, on the other hand, then I hope you enjoy this pointless, silly, romantic little tale.  
-Trin)_

**_ Love's Labours Won: a Love Story_**

A thousand ages ago, adventure happened, and then came peace; for a long while, children grew, flowers bloomed, and nothing of great importance occured. All of the heroes and heroines of stories past began to relax their guard, to age and enjoy their aging, as was their right and earned due. All, that is, except for one.

His name was Cumber.

* * *

Cumber loved this side of the hill at this time of day. It was on the lee of the complex, and the wind just barely danced over the top of the rise, ruffling his hair and keeping the air cool without becoming a constant bother. The clouds - large, white and fluffy as clouds could be - positively flew by overhead, belying the seemingly tame speed the wind chose to manifest down below. It was like life, he thought to himself as he watched them, occasionally squinting when the sunlight broke through and struck his gaze. Like life, or any other number of things that semeed to be something that they simply _weren't_.

Like life...

Or like Bra.

_...best not to think on such things._

Cumber, of all the remaining people on earth, did not appear to have changed at all since the Black died and the worlds became one. The nature of his body did not allow him to age like everyone else, and unlike the rest of the world he had no companion - no one of his species, male or female - to communicate with. After the Black had gone and everyone had begun to adjust to the newness of what Gai had done, there was a long period of time which he spent, simply put, _alone._

Gokuu had eventually found him, and, in typical Kakarotto fashion, forced Cumber to join in the Capsule Corporation group with a vengance. He... he had...

_...encouraging people to like him, showering him with food while insisting that he was a good guy now, giving him yet more food and forcing him to frolic with everybody else and telling stories of how most of the OTHERS there had been "bad guys" at one time and weren't any more and giving him more food and offering to spar with him and did he want anything to eat?_

_Gokuu in host-mode was completely too much; for that evening, Cumber felt himself being caught up in the fantasy of friendship and love, and almost... FELT as though he were one of them, FELT that he were part of what was affectionately known as the "Z-Warriors."_

_And then he woke up. _

_He saw Vejiita looking at him; cutting eyes, cautious expression, arms tense and ready for ANYHTING that Cumber might try, and he knew then and there that the beautiful fantasy was just that: a fantasy. None of them would really ever accept him after what he'd done; after what his people had done. Centuries of murder and spiritual vampirism could not be swept under the carpet for the sake of a few drinks._

_Knowing this, and knowing the ache in his heart would not die after what he had seen, Cumber left the party, intending never to return. _

_He left the building, left the yard, and walked toward the road with every intention of just going until he had to stop; such utter and complete happiness as he saw behind him was alien - ironically - and he could neither understand it nor accept it. He had never known such behavior in his life. _

_What finally stopped him was Bra._

_"Where are you going?" Bra asked from behind him, her child-voice slightly squeaky and overbearingly cute; she had followed him out. Cumber swallowed and turned to face her, bending down. Pretty girl; she'd be a gem when she grew up. _

_"Away," he said softly, not knowing what else to tell her and hoping she wouldn't run back and inform her parents. _

_"Why?" she asked, her eyes filling with crystalline tears as if he'd told her he hated her and never wanted to see her again._

Oh, gods, _he thought to himself. How you could look at something like THAT every day and not end up with a little girl spoiled rotten..._

_"I... I have to," was all he said, leaning a bit closer so he could wipe away one of the stray tears._

_She sniffled once, looked in straight in the eye - and then changed completely._

_A calculating look appeared on her face; one he'd seen before, surely, but not in this little girl. Bra tilted her head a bit, summing, it seemed, what he'd said and the reason he'd given; then she pronounced her judgement._

_"That's a stupid reason," she said, looking like herself but not _quite_, and Cumber straightened and stepped back. What..._

_"If you're going to damn yourself, do so in private; but now you've gotten these people to love you - you can't leave. You're obligated. And besides..." and the weird, cold logic suddenly evaporated, to be replaced by little-girl misery once more. "I don't want you to goooooooooo!" she wailed, flinging herself at him and wrapping all four limbs around his torso with such force he nearly fell over._

_"B - Bra!" he said, trying to push her off, but of course, little-girl wailing brought the little girl's papa - who looked less than pleased to see said little girl wrapped around what papa still considered to be the enemy. It was fortunate for all that Gokuu was right behind Vejiita, or Cumber probably would have been killed. As it ended up, instead of dying, Cumber finally agreed to stay at the Son house and be... one of them._

_Accepted._

_"Try it - you'll like it!" Gokuu said, cheerful enough to be hit - which Vejiita did - and then a year passed, and more years started passing, and before he knew it..._

Present day. Bra was turning nineteen. And Cumber had stayed around.

* * *

Cumber watched the boys play from his position on the hillock; pardon - boys and _girl_ play. The three were doing some sort of frisbee-dodge-ball combo, and apparently the goal of it was to behead one another in true Saiya-jin fashion.

"Think fast!" Bra shouted, meanwhile throwing the ball she held in her hands with such force that the it hit Goten before the words were even out of her mouth. Goten fell backwards as though he'd been kicked.

Bra - beautiful, beautiful Bra, every inch the girl that Ru Sa and Vejiita had seen in their vision - cackled like a madman and attacked him.

"B... Braaaaaaaa!" Goten wailed, blushing because Trunks was laughing at him. "Get off!"

"No!" she exclaimed, crouching over Goten like like a hungry tigress. "Shove me and _die_."As it was, Goten was loathe to touch her anyway; she had her mother's proportions and her father's strength, so tousling with her was a dangerous proposition. Bra had been known to break the bones of people who had even accidentally copped a feel.

Goten looked at Trunks. "Will you get it OFF me please, Trunks-_dear_?" he asked with dripping sarcasm, absolutely glaring bile.

"Sure, sure. In a minute," Trunks laughed, rather enjoying the sight of his baby sister making mincement out of a young man five years her senior.

"Argh," said Goten, and Cumber smiled, watching. Children... the three of them were so happy together; Dende couldn't have known what he was talking about. What about Bra was not compatible?

* * *

_"Oh, I don't know, Dende," Cumber said, walking slowly with his head down, watching his feet, hands in his pockets as he studied the dandelions along the path. "It's been a long time since I... I dunno."_

_Dende laughed, slightly taller than Cumber was and accompanied, as always, by Reep. Reep simply bounced in circles around them both, laughing as if for pure joy. _

_"No, no, NO," Reep said, leaping right into Cumber's face and startling him. "There IS a way! You and the child! Yes! Supposed to be! You and the child and the drained one and the - "_

_"Reep, dear, I think you're scaring him," Dende warned gently, eyeing the strange four-legged creature with fondness. "Cumber... I think you are missing the point. The point is that Bra has absorbed Chive, and that this, along with her physical make up of Saiya-jin mix, makes her the perfect counterpart for what you are."_

_Cumber made an uncomfortable noise that was supposed to be a laugh, and shrugged off Dende's arm. "Dende," he said for the twelfth time. "She's SEVEN YEARS OLD."_

_"Not for long," Dende said. "In a week, she turns eight."_

_"DENDE," Cumber said, remembering to calm his voice after his initial outburst and the mildly disapproving look from earth's Kami. "Dende. I appreciate what you're trying to do - but this is ridiculous. I don't need a mate. I'm not looking for a mate. Even if I were - and assuming I wanted a female - the entire issue of my immortality kind of comes into play, and that would make things a little difficult, don't you think?" This, for Cumber, was virulent arguing; it was about as acidic as he got._

_"No," said Dende calmly, as though he were detailing a shopping list, "because I am going to make you mortal. More important than that, however, is the fact that because of what Bra has absorbed, she is no longer compatible with any other male being on the face of the planet; either she marries you or she dies alone."_

_At this point in the conversation, Cumber had to sit down for a while._

* * *

Cumber sighed and watched the grown children play. Aside from that most bizarre evening, Dende had not contacted him again about Bra or mortality or anythign of the sort; Cumber had to wonder if that were due to required kami-mystery or if it were merely negligence on Dende's part because Dende himself had no gender issues at all.

Bra looked up at the hill just then and spotted him. He could almost swear her eyes gleamed like those of a tigress. _Here we go, _he thought, seeing what was by now a familiar, playfully predatory grin sharpen her featuers.

"Cumber!" she shouted, as usual forgoing the honorific of _-san_. "Catch!" And with no further warning, hurled the frisbee at him at speeds no human could ever see or hope to intercept. Cumber, however, was far from human; reacting almost like a bookworm with reflexes he never knew he had, Cumber sat up and DID manage to catch the frisbee before it slammed into his chest - and then proceeded to fumble and drop it.

"Kami!" he exlclaimed, looking with mild irritation at the melted plastic on his hands. "Didn't your mother tell you NOT to use the regular frisbees for this game anymore?"

"Yes, but I couldn't find a new one," Bra answered simply, hopped off Goten, and then started jogging toward the hill. Cumber stared with wide eyes as she came; she'd never enjoyed flying as much as she had running, and just aesthetically, he had to agree. Her eyes, and the way she moved, and the sunlight caught in her hair like the deepest sea colors, and her _smile_, and she was coming over HERE, and -

Bra reached his spot on the hill and stopped, looming over him, hands on her hips, not impressed by his puppy-dog looks or by his wounded pride - or even his singed hands, for that matter. "Well?" she said.

Cumber stared up at her. "...well, what?"

"Are you going to give me my _frisbee_?"

Cumber blinked. "Oh," he said sheepishly, and picked it up again; at least it was no longer trying to melt on his hands. He glanced up. "You want it?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I said I did," she annouced, her look growing slightly wary.

The corner of his mouth turned up, a tiny smile. "Then say, 'please.'" _Okay, Cumber, WHAT are you doing?_ he asked himself, meeting her gaze and holding on to the frisbee with both hands.

Bra's eyes grew absolutely huge. "PLEASE?!?" she shrieked, and instead of fulfilling his request, she jumped on him. Cumber was really not sure what happened then, exactly; suddenly Bra was on top of him, and they were tousling for the much beleaguered frisbee, and they both were laughing, and -

Vejiita's reaction made it seem as though he'd caught them doing something much worse than either tousling or kissing.

"**_WHAT IN HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH MY DAUGHTER_**?" suddenly thundered at them like judgment from a god, and Cumber - who wasn't quite sure what had happened - jumped off Bra and back a few feet, holding the mangled frisbee in his hands like a shield. Wait a minute... off her? She'd been on him. How had he gotten on her in the first pl-

Vejiita landed between them and glared, oozing an intimidation that suffered not a bit for his lack of height.

Cumber cleared his throat. "She wanted the frisbee," he said nonchalantly as possible, holding what was left of the poor battered thing up for inspection.

Vejiita looked at it; looked at him; glanced back at his daughter, who was still on the ground - _and good gods, her blouse rode up and I did NOT do that on purpose - _with her shirt halfway up her stomach; back at the frisbee; back at Cumber.

"If you ever touch her like that again," Vejiita said calmly. "I will take your dick and tie it around your throat. Is that clear?"

Physical improbability of that statement notwithstanding, Cumber's jaw fell open. He stammered for a moment, trying to come up with a defense of some sort because it was a _very _bad thing to have the prince of all Saiyans telling you something like that.

Bra saved him the trouble.

"Oh, for the love of hell!" she shouted, hopping to her feet and sounding every bit as firey as her father. "What's wrong with you, papa? We were just playing!"

"You are nineteen years old and that is too old to be playing _that_ kind of game with any innocence, woman!" Vejiita said, not at all put off by the fact that she was two or three inches taller than he was.

"What kind of game?" Bra had her mother's brashness, as well. "It's not like I was screwing him on the front lawn," she smirked, and Goten and Trunks felt it wise to interceed at this point.

Vejiita's eyes had gone almost comically wide. "You... you... _little_..."

"Okay, okay, okay, caaaaaaaalm down, it wasn't anything," Trunks said, stepping in between the two and mentally telling his sister to tuck her damned shirt back _in_. Goten grabbed Cumber, meanwhile, and pulled him out of mangling range - which was to say, arm's reach. "Look, they were just playing, okay? We were playing the same way all day long, and if you'd actually been here you would have seen that, and then you'd KNOW nothing was wrong. Just relax, papa. We'd never let anybody do anything untoward to Bra. You know that. Right?" Trunks said, trying to catch and hold his father's eye contact and hoping Vejiita wouldn't decide to hit him.

Vejiita's eyes narrowed. "She is nineteen today," he said, speaking in low, deadly tones that thousands of beings had heard just before their extermination. "Don't you know what that _means?_"

There was puzzled silence all around for a moment, and then Cumber spoke up, trying to be helpful. "It means according to Saiya-jin royal culture, she's now eligible for marriage."

"Shut **_up!_**" Vejiita said, turning and sending a ki blast toward Cumber that would have done no small amount of damage had it hit. Cumber and Goten jumped in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding it.

Said blast took out part of the opposite hillside.

"Ack! DADDY!" Bra shouted and ran toward the impact crater, concerned about the things she'd left on that hillside for safekeeping. Vejiita neatly caught her arm as she went by and obviously was not going to let go for anything. "Let GO!" she screamed anyway, thrashing as if her life depended on it.

Vejiita was completely unmoved. He looked all the men over, one by one. "The Kyuujinshu-jin is right," he said, refusing - as always - to call Cumber by his given name. "She is eligible for marriage. And she is not going to be coming to 'play' with you people unsupervised again."

Trunks scratched his head. "Um... I think mom's gonna have a few things to say about that - "

"That is between me and your mother," Vejiita snapped. "You stay out of this. And YOU, woman, are coming home with me." With that, he lifted into the air and flew off, dragging his struggling, howling daughter with him. Cumber stared.

"Gods, I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

Goten started laughing; so did Trunks. Cumber blinked at them both. "What are you doing?" he asked. "This is horrible! How could you laugh at such a thing?"

"Because it's happened before, Cumber-san," Trunks said, still chuckling and picking up twisted bits of plastic from the earlier frisbee battle. "He did it when she was ten, when she was thirteen, when she got her period, when she wore her first brassiere... actually, I can't believe you missed all of those."

"He... what?" said Cumber, paling at the thought of all those things in connection with Bra.

"He flipped for a while and declared her off limits, that's what he did," Goten said, pouting a bit because between Bra and her father, his cool clothes were quite ruined. "Then Bulma had it out with him and Bra came back and everything was normal again. No big whoop."

Cumber was beginning to agree with Trunks; how had he _missed_ all of that? "It must not have been a long time in between each... um... crackdown, then, right?" he asked, wearing a slightly lost expression as he searched the hillside for his shoe; the right one had come off during the struggle for the frisbee, and he wasn't sure where it had gone.

"Well... yeah. The first one lasted maybe all of two days. The third one was the longest, though - that's when she got her period, remember, Goten? She wasn't allowed out for a week."

Cumber blushed. "Gods, you guys are awfully blunt about private things like this," he said, kneeling to pull his sneaker back on.

Trunks chuckled weakly, his cheeks lightly flushed. "Well," he said. "When your father makes such a big deal out of every little thing... what are you going to do? Pretend it's not there?" He shrugged. "Besides, we can smell it."

Cumber paused; oh, yes - the infamous Saiyan sense of smell. He had chosen purposely not to adopt that particular trait when he formed his new Saiyan body, so many years ago. Honestly, it just seemed... unpleasant. "So you think he'll let her out again in a couple of days?" he asked, taking advantage of his knelt position to tighten his other shoelace as well.

Goten smiled. "Youuuuuuu want her baaaaaaaaaack," he teased, grinning more broadly than Gokuu ever could. "YOU want her back because YOU'VE got a crush! Ha ha!"

Cumber blinked. "I... what?"

"Bra and Cumber, sitting in a tree! K-i-s-s-i-n-g! WOOO!" Goten exclaimed, and did a very odd version of the Elvis hip-thrust.

Cumber, who had never heard that song, stared at him as if he were going mad. "Wh... tree? What are you talking about?"

Trunks gave Goten a chiding look. "Keep that up, Goten, and papa will hear you and come back he _will_ kill Cumber," he said, and Goten obediently stopped. Of course, he pouted more.

"But I LIKE it," he said, and Trunks shook his head in mock disgust.

Cumber was still confused. "I... who said..."

"It's okay, Cumber," Trunks said, gathering up his lunch, his book, and the few other items he'd brought with him today. "She'll be back soon and everything will be back to normal. And ignore Goten. You know he sees sex under every doily."

"Woo!" Goten confirmed, doing another pelvic thrust.

Cumber coughed politely. That was about all he could do.

"Well, see you later," Trunks said. "Not much left to do here, and I have exams to study for. Ja." And he flew away.

Goten looked at Cumber almost apologetically. "Yeah," he said. "Me too. Dinner awaits."

"You're never going to go to college, are you?" Cumber asked, standing and neatly brushing off his slacks.

Goten laughed. "Why? I have all I need right here, including the perfect job. I'm not going anywhere - Trunks can, since he's got to RUN this place when his mom's gone, but... hey. That's his business, not mine. See ya!" And with that, he also flew away. Cumber looked around at the hillside that seemed to have grown so very quiet since Bra had gone.

"Well," he said, for some reason recalling the softness of Bra's skin as he fought her for the frisbee. "This was... quite a day." There seemed to be nothing more to say, so, after making sure he had all his own things, Cumber also flew away, leaving the hillside in complete silence.

* * *

On Kami's tower, Dende laughed. "Well, Reep," he said. "It's begun. I hope you're happy."

"I and many more," said Reep, who then refused to explain what he meant by "many more." The rest of the day passed in peace.


	2. Chapter 2

**_ Love's Labours Won: a Love Story, part two_**

Very often, things don't go as we wish; and when that happens, we have a choice in how to deal with them. We can fuss, panic, fume, throw things, curse, and generally behave in such a way as to thoroughly embarrass ourselves. Or, on the other hand, we can think them through and work at them until we find a decent solution.

Vejiita, naturally, chose the former.

"Like hell she is," he said, and took another bite of potato. No way he was losing this one. No way.

Bulma calmly poured gravy over her steak and mushrooms, not really bothering to look at him; her expression was somewhere between amused and flustered. "Vejiita, there are some things a young woman has to have. Freedom is one of them."

"Like hell it is," he reiterated, and took another roll. They had been talking like this the entire dinner; thrust, parry. Point, counterpoint - although too often the counterpoints lacked more than a little logic. Bra, meanwhile, ignored them both and stood at the sink, doing the dishes. She was humming Beethoven's fifth.

"Bra, dear," Bulma said distractedly, not quite looking at her. "Wear gloves or you'll get dishpan hands."

"So?" Bra asked, her voice still retaining the childlike lilt of questioning.

"No man will want you if you have dishpan hands, dear," Bulma answered, giving the shallow and not very serious reason that her own mother had given her.

Bra looked down at herself. "If any man wants me, mom, I don't think it'll be for my hands."

"Bra!" Bulma said, not shocked at the statement but rather who had said it - this was her daughter, after all.

"You see? You SEE?" Vejiita exclaimed, triumphant. "She's not mature enough to handle what's coming after her!"

Bra giggled and stuck her chest out as far as it would go. "See what?"

Bulma sighed. This _really_ wasn't helping.

* * *

Trunks sat in his room on the bed, leaning back against the wall with his arms behind his head. He could hear the occasional shouting, of course, from where he was, but he chose to ignore it; unlike most homes, he understood that the arguments were actually healthy here. If his parents _weren't_ arguing, then something was definitely wrong; besides, afterwards they usually made up by having very wild, very _loud_ sex. That part, he just left alone.

For once, though, this particular argument concerned him; as lightly as he'd spoken to Cumber, the weird fact of the import of Bra's age was hitting him more and more as the evening wore on. To be truthful, he was surprised that Bra hadn't made a fuss about that; "eligible for marriage," indeed. What that meant to Vejiita, exactly, had yet to be explained; he almost acted like it meant any man could just swoop in off the street and take her as a "bride."

Well... as long as Bra didn't go into some sort of deranged rutting season, this all SHOULD be all right eventually... hopefully. He thought.

Trunks looked up as Bra walked past his partially open door, on the way to her own room. Her casually teasing smile was nowhere to be found, and her eyes seemed to be focused on something other than the rug at her feet. He had seen her look like this before - when she took exams, entered into debate club challenges, or did anything else that was really, really serious. It scared him; that look meant that Things were happening.

"Hey," he said, sitting up on the bed.

She paused outside the door. "Hey," she said back, waiting for him to say whatever she was going to say. Her eyes were cold; but that was not surprising. Her eyes were _always _cold when she was being analytical - it was an odd trait that appeared on neither side of the family before her, but Trunks was used to it by now.

"You okay?" he asked, ignoring the louder-yet arguing from the dining room.

Bra smiled, eyes still cold. "Of course," she said. "Why are you asking?"

Trunks shrugged. "Lots of weird things happening here, is all," he said. "This new thing of papa's - do you think he's serious?"

Bra snorted, not quite bitterly. "Is he ever NOT serious?" she said, and looked down.

_Ho, boy,_ Trunks thought. "Did he ever explain exactly what it meant? She looked at him, questioning. "I mean... you're not going to g... to do anything weird, are you? I mean... no... strange... um, urges, or..." Trunks' face was growing more and more red with each spoken word. Bra laughed, low and throaty.

"You mean am I getting any powerful, uncharacteristic urges to go jump somebody?" she asked, all pristine and proper; her eyes had not lost their coolness, but at least now they seemed amused.

Trunks's blush deepened at least three shades; this was his _sister, _for kami's sake. "Yeah. Something like that."

"No. Not a one," she assured him, finally softening a little. "I think dad's just upset because it means that - in his mind - I COULD just... run off and get married now, without his consent. At least, I'm guessing that." She chuckled softly. "He never did quite get the concept that we're more human than Saiyan."

Trunks nodded; he knew what she meant. "So then it's just... what? Needs to blow over?"

Bra stayed silent for a moment, eyes unblinking and expression unreadable. For some reason, Trunks found her gaze disconcerting and had to fight not to look away. "I think," said Bra, "that I am going to have to figure out what this means on my own - and that means that dad and I are going to be butting heads more than usual. I also think that Cumber just might get himself killed." With that, she turned and walked down the hall.

Trunks blinked. "...Cumber?" He hopped up and jogged to the door. "What do you mean? What about Cumber?"

Bra's door was already shut; she wasn't answering.

Cumber stared at the hallway for a moment, mouth open and mind ablaze. Cumber? Then... what, he _had_ been groping her? Oh, come, now; this was CUMBER; Mr. Naive and Soft Spoken himself. No way he could have... would...

Great. Now, he didn't know what to think. Sighing and running his hand through his hair, Trunks shut his door on the sound of his parents arguing and tried to get some sleep.

* * *

After dinner at the Son house, Cumber went home to bed. It was a simple thing to do: undress, bathe, pull up the sheets and go to sleep. He was full from Chi Chi's cooking, his ears rang from the combined chatter of Gokuu and Goten, and his shoulders ached from a Gohan-glad-to-see-you-again hug - which was only expected, since Gohan had been in the Ukraine for months. All in all, it had been a very satisfying evening.

The problem was, he couldn't sleep. He lay on his bed, looking at the patterns on the ceiling and wondering what he was meant to do about everything he had seen. After the things he had been through, it was impossible for him to believe in chance anymore; it was very obvious that his actions in this case had already been preordained.

It just really would have been nice to know what they were ahead of time.

He eyed the shapes he had carved into his ceiling; of all the Kyuujinshu, he had been the only one to maintain certain arts of ceremony, and having forms of stars and other things above one when one slept was one of them. No one else had cared, when they'd been alive; they had laughed at him for continuing these traditions. It was almost pitiful; but Cumber was not going to lose his habits. Whatever they'd become, whatever monsters they'd mutated into, they were still Kyuujinshu and had a glorious past. Cumber was never going to allow himself to forget it.

He rolled over on his side, thinking; Dende had, several years ago, said some very strange things to him regarding the child, Bra. Cumber had not accepted these things, and instead, had gone on with his life and pretended they'd never happened. Well, really, what else was there to do? Chive had been the last woman he loved, yes, but Bra was not Chive. That's not how it worked. Bra may have taken on some of Chive's traits when she "ate" her - like dough will take on a slightly spicy flavor if you add nutmeg - but there was no separate entity of _Chive_ in there. Chive had been absorbed. Chive was gone.

He missed her.

Of course, the fact that she would not have missed him did not escape him; he knew she'd never loved him. She'd been... ah, more than nice to him to get what she wanted, and when she didn't need anything, had taken brusqueness and snippiness to a new level to make him go away. But he still couldn't help loving her; her intelligence, her logic... the way she was always cool under pressure, always in control... Even the way her eyes flashed when she was taking somebody down. Everything about her was beautiful to him, and when he thought about the time she'd given so much _more_ that just promises to him, that time that he'd honestly been trying to _win_ her and she'd willingly given herself to him and he'd thought...

...he'd thought it would be forever. As she'd moved beneath him, above him, against him - he'd believed that she WOULD be with him, his, in his arms, and that had made it even better. He had given his heart completely to her that night, without reserve, believing that since she was acting on his many hints and hopes and promises, that she believed in them too... only to find that she did not. The very next day she was back in Ru Sa's bed, and seemed to have nothing to say to him at all.

Very few wounds Cumber had experienced had come even close to that.

Almost in defense against the new waves of pain these memories brought, Cumber closed his eyes tightly and forced himself to sleep. He wasn't expecting to be flooded with strange dreams; he merely needed an escape and was taking the only one that was allowed him, temporary though it may be.

It didn't really help that all night he dreamed of a woman's soft, warm body in his arms; a woman's body, yes - but of Bra, not of Chive. He dreamed of Bra sleeping next to him, growing old with him, living together and bearing children together and discovering their first grey hairs together and doing all those things that "normal" people had always done together all around him - and had forever been denied to those of Cumber's people. He wet his pillow with tears, unwaking, because none of these things would ever, COULD ever, be. Not to Cumber; not with Bra. For Cumber, sleep ceased to hold sanctuary from pain.

* * *

Near dawn, Dende observed the earth and contemplated his next move. "Are they both asleep?" he asked, not turning to face Reep directly.

"Check check!" said Reep, bounding in the air.

Dende shook his head. "Are you SURE we should be doing this? It seems awfully..."

"Silly? Romantic? Aphrodite-inspired?" Reep suggested, leaping clear over Dende's head to bounce on the other side of him.

"Invasive," Dende replied, mentally watching the earth with his eyes closed. "Are you sure we're supposed to do this?"

"Saa, you already asked that, oh kami mine!" Reep announced, and stopped bouncing. "It IS necessary! The result will be good, and important for continued livings!"

Dende chuckled softly. "Livings? Well. We do want those to continue." He concentrated for a moment, drawing the necessary power together to do what Reep insisted had to be done. Truthfully, Dende wasn't sure of the "why" of this; he wasn't even entirely sure of the "how." However, he'd learned from long experience that when Reep insisted on something, it was best to follow that insistence - no matter how silly it seemed.

Placing his hands gracefully together in front of him, Dende concentrated his ki, focusing on two individuals down on earth who were completely unsuspecting and unprepared for what was going to happen.

* * *

Trunks had trouble getting to sleep that night; of course, he had no idea that his late insomnia actually limited what Dende could show him in dreams, so he really couldn't be blamed for cutting short what was to follow. He was very concerned about his sister; Bra had been... acting _oddly_, somehow, in some way that he couldn't quite place. There was nothing blatantly abnormal in her behavior; rather, it was something in her attitude. It seemed that lately, she'd been slipping more and more easily into cold, calculating mode, whether or not said attitude was required. She'd done it tonight, when he'd asked her about their parents.

It worried him; pulling crap like that had gotten her into trouble as a highschool student simply because she'd scared the daylights out of all her teachers, especially in debate club. It was very odd; if Trunks hadn't known any better, he'd say that that attitude - that cold detatchment, the sharpened ability to take people apart with nothing but words - was almost _foreign. _It didn't seem to be something Bra had possessed the ability to do before that whole mess with the Black.

The part that scared him the most, however, was that he didn't know _why_ she did it. Maturity aside, something was very, very wrong with his sister, and Trunks had the unnerving feeling that he was the only one close enough to see it. Bra, as a rule, had no close friends.

Well. This would have to be contemplated later. Trunks had classes in the morning, and staying awake like this, mulling over things, was certainly not going to help. Resigning himself to stress and ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach, Toronkusu slept - and awakened in another world.

* * *

Trunks became aware that he was very uncomfortable, which was at least in part explained by the fact that he was somehow sleeping on the floor. Irritated, he sat up - and found himself not in his room at all.

This looked like the room of Spirit and Time. Blank walls and seamless floors, all purity of white about him with no delineation whatsoever. He blinked. Confused, he stood up, trying to get his bearings.

Across from him, sprawled out as he had been, lay Cumber; only it was not Cumber as Trunks knew him. Cumber was lying on his side, curled into a fetal position, and he seemed... ageless. Soft but wrinkled skin met with salt and pepper hair; yet the shape of his face and the condition of his hands belonged to those of a young, young man - but there were tears on his cheeks. And as Cumber shifted and began to wake, it seemed to Trunks that this oddly young/old quality reversed itself: black hair, young skin - but tired eyes, tired lips, the hands of an old man. And then Cumber awoke, and both impressions were gone; the Kyuujinshu man regained his normal appearance.

"What in the world?" Cumber said as he sat up, wiping his face to remove traitorous tears, and something about the way he moved jolted Trunks into the fact that this was not a dream. He was really here, as was Cumber; they were genuinely, consciously present. However they'd gotten here, they were here, in reality; and therefore it would have to be dealt with.

"Um," Trunks said weakly, running his hand through the lavender hair he'd inherited from his mother's side and trying to ignore the racing of his heart. "I don't know."

Cumber blinked at him; eyed Trunks' elephant-pattern pajamas with a raised eyebrow, looked at himself, and stood. "This is... different," he said somewhat shyly, hands in his pockets as he looked around. "I guess this is... some dimensional something or other? Maybe where you met Jouten?"

Trunks gave him an odd look. Cumber seemed to be taking this awfully calmly. "You're acting like this has happened to you before."

"It has ," said Cumber with a shrug, looking around with deferential curiosity. "But I'm Kyuujinshu; we always walk when we dream."

Trunks said nothing for a moment; walk when you dream? Dreamwalking? Oi... now this was sounding New-Agey. "Um... oh," was all he could say in response, and, unconsciously mimicking Cumber's posture, put his shaking hands in his pockets and looked around. "Well, this is pretty new to me," he said, trying to adopt Cumber's casual attitude and wondering where the door was IF such a thing even existed here. "I mean, I did something like this with Jouten, as you said, but that's really not the same. There's not the same... overwhelming...ness here."

Cumber smiled softly. "Overwhelmingness? Did the great professor Briefs just make up a word?" he teased, trying to put Trunks at ease, and that's when the voice spoke.

"Gentlemen, if you would please direct your attention to the far wall," it said, and both men jumped slightly.

"What the - " Trunks started, and abruptly the room went dark. About twenty feet away from them, one wall - which had previously been invisible due to the unbroken whiteness - lit up like a movie screen, and suddenly, there was Bra. A six year old Bra, with a light green, pretty aura, in what was to them the horrid and detestable act of swallowing Chive's soul whole.

Trunks gaped, while Cumber made a choking sound and stumbled backwards as though physically hit; due to the bizarre characteristics of this place, they could actually SEE Chive's soul. They saw it, drawn like azure silt from Chive's body, flowing directly into Bra and disappearing - and making that girl's aura light up with a brilliant, cold blue. They saw Chive slump to the floor - completely without any hint of soul at all, no aura, no _life_ - and Bra begin to cry. Enveloped in her father's arms, she was obviously very frightened for what she'd been made to do - and her aura remained... altered. It contained a magnificent blue now, a blue too old for this little girl; the blue of ageless icebergs, monoliths in the heart of the sea.

Trunks and Cumber stared, one sitting, the other standing; and just as suddenly as the film (or whatever it was) had begun, it disappeared. Silence and darkness reigned for one bizarre moment, and then the light - such as it was - returned.

"Gentlemen, I think you see the problem here," said the voice, and oddly enough, Trunks began to think he knew the owner.

"...Dende?" he asked in disbelief, the unreality of the situation washing over him like cold water.

The voice cleared its throat. "Not important," it said, sounding slightly embarassed. "What IS important here is that Bra's absorption of Chive was not done with training, nor has it been balanced by any kind of control over the last twelve years," Dende continued, speaking before either of the men could comment. "Taking in another person's soul is very serious business; now that she herself is reaching maturity, what there is of Chive in here is going to... ah... take form."

"WHAT?" shouted Trunks, and immediately wished he hadn't. The sound reverberated back and forth in this room at horrifying decibel levels, causing both men to cover their ears for few solid moments of pain.

"...ow..." Trunks said apologetically.

"Please don't do that," Dende said, and continued. "What you must understand is that Chive was much, much older and much, much stronger than Bra was or will ever be, because she's simply not going to live that long. This means that as she reaches further maturity, Chive's self will manifest more and more until Bra herself disappears entirely. Think of it as reverse absorption."

Utter silence greeted this. Perhaps they didn't believe him, or perhaps they were in shock; Dende wasn't sure, and didn't have time to ask. It was almost daylight down there now, and the moment they woke up, this little jaunt would be over. "If you would prevent this, something is required," he said, and finally got a response.

"Re... required?" Cumber asked in a low voice, trying not to think of the dreams he'd had that night in conjunction with this abrupt weirdness. They couldn't be connected - surely.

"I only say this because it's important she survive," Dende stated calmly, lacking the time to be subtle. "She must be persuaded to love you and bond with you as a Kyuujinshu."

Cumber gaped, eyes huge. "She..." he started, when hideously bright light abruptly flooded his mind, accompanied by a loud cacophany that sounded like voices. He cried out and gripped his head - and the pain disappeared. Suddenly enough that the transition dazed him, Cumber found himself back in bed, looking blearily at Gokuu - who for some reason was standing in his doorway, talking about sparring at the crack of dawn and completely unaware of what he'd just interrupted. Unreality washed over him.

_What in bloody HELL..._

Cumber leapt to his feet and raced past the confused looking Kakarotto without so much as good morning, flying for the Capsule Corporation as fast as he could go. What had just happened? It was too abrupt to process, and Cumber felt the need for confirmation. Had that really happened? WHAT had really happened? _Trunks has to remember. Trunks was there. Trunks... oh, gods, please, don't let me be going crazy..._

With this panicked thought in mind, Cumber flew away, leaving a very confused Gokuu behind him.

Gokuu stood where he was for a moment, watching Cumber go. Cumber's panicked departure didn't seem to strike him as odd in the slightest. "Oh, well," Gokuu shrugged. "Hopefully he'll be back for lunch." And with that, Gokuu went home and thought about it no more.


	3. Chapter 3

**_ Love's Labours Won: a Love Story, part three_**

_Why?_

_WHY?_

_**WHY??**_

Cumber had no answer. Nearly reckless, he plunged over the grass and toward his goal, toward the Capsule Corporation, toward Bra - and then at the last minute, had the good sense to slow down. Coming at them like this without warning would be all the excuse Vejiita needed to beat the hell out of him, and Cumber had no time right now to be in traction. So, maddening though it was, he forced himself to land and walk the last quarter mile to the Briefs house. An extra seven minutes shouldn't kill anyone.

And because Murphy's Law was in full swing, it was only after Cumber landed and powered down that a situation requiring power arose.

* * *

"Target approaching, check."

"One minute to ETA, check check."

"Hey, Rubert; the tools ready?"

"Yeah, Jorge, they're ready."

"...you sure?"

"YES I'm sure, chill, will you? If they weren't ready to go, we wouldn't be bothering because we'd get creamed, so stop complaining and get ready. Thirty seconds."

"Right. Check check, Rubert."

Twenty seconds later, they were in orbit over the Earth, focused directly over a set of buildings known as the Capsule Corporation.

"Target fixed," sat Rubert. "Descending. Acquisition in approximately fifteen... fourteen... thirteen..."

* * *

"Twelve... eleven... ten..." Cumber was counting approximate seconds until he would arrive at the house; he was bored, on foot, and it was something to do. It turned out to be a fortunate past-time; because he was counting, he knew exactly how far away he was from the house when a blue, cylindrical beam of light shot out of the sky and hit the room of the Capsule Corporation.

He gasped. "What the..." The beam - deep, shiny, like glass - was centered directly over Bra's room. Sudden fear chilled Cumber's spine.

"Oh, gods." Without further hesitation, he powered up and made a mighty leap for the roof.

He landed mere feet from the blue glasslike thing, racing at it across slippery tile, and was just about to touch it when it disappeared. Cumber overbalanced; with a cry, he fell through the hole it had left in the roof and tumbled head over heels - right onto Bra's empty bed.

"Whoa! Agh!" he cried, bouncing twice, and landed on the floor beside the bed. Immediately, he scrambled to his feet and threw aside the bed covers. "Bra?" His heart was in his throat. "BRA?"

"Cumber," answered a voice from the doorway, but it wasn't Bra's; instead, it belonged to her father.

"...shit," said Cumber under his breath as Vejiita took in the state of the room - ruined - the bedcovers strewn, and no Bra. His gaze came to rest on Cumber and stayed there.

"I can explain," Cumber began, and that was all, because Vejiita attacked him and they both went through the floor.

* * *

Bulma was having a very odd day.

Everyone had them, it was true; but she'd learned many years ago that odd days for her usually consisted of earth-shattering events, and so when she saw shirtless Trunks come stumbling into the kitchen looking horrified and wearing elephant pajamas, she was not inclined to argue. Instead, she offered him some tea.

"Something wrong, honey?"

"Where is she?!" he demanded, imploring, taking a few steps toward her and raising his hands as if in supplication.

"Where is whom, Trunks?" said Bulma.

"Bra. She... she's..."

Trunks never had the chance to expand his answer; without warning, Cumber and Vejiita exploded through the ceiling, Cumber was shouting something like "I didn't do anything with her! I swear I didn't!" and Vejiita very obviously trying to lop his head off.

"Hey! Stop!" cried Trunks, and moved to interfere.

"VeJIITA!" Bulma screeched, extremely unhappy about the state of her house - and suddenly, Gokuu was in the kitchen too and standing between Cumber and her raging husband.

Cumber had definitely seen better days. Trunks held him up, supporting.

"MOVE, Kakarotto!"

"I don't suppose," Bulma spoke through grit teeth, "that anyone is inclined to tell me what the hell is going on here."

"I dunno, Vejiita, it looks like an unfair fight to me," Gokuu replied, ignoring Bulma. "What's gotcha so upset anyway?"

"My daughter is MISSING!" Vejiita shouted, making no bones about the problem. "I come in here, my daughter's bed is empty - my NINETEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER - and who do I find in her place? Shirtless? GUILTY? You get out of my way, Kakaorrotto, or I am going to make you SO sorry..."

"But I didn't do it!" protested Cumber. Vejiita gave him a death look.

"Papa, we're wasting time!" Trunks tried and was ignored like his mother.

"Oh. Well, then let's just go looking for her, okay?" Gokuu replied, and in response, Vejiita attacked him. To be fair, the prince was trying to get to Cumber, but the effect was the same. Within seconds, Bulma's kitchen looked like so much scrap, and unconcerned, the combatants went raging into the living room.

"GAAAH!" Bulma cried, and ran after them.

Trunks sighed. "Come on. You can lean on me if you have to," he murmured above the din, and helped Cumber limp in the other direction. Slowly, they made their way to the dining room, where Trunks sat Cumber on a chair and began checking him for injuries.

"Gods, he hit you hard, didn't he," Trunks said as he prodded, frowning a little. "I don't think it's broken..."

"It was," Cumber said, and gasped when Trunks prodded a little too hard.

"Sorry."

"It's okay. My body's healing anyway," Cumber said, taking deep breaths. "I can't blame him for panicking, I know, even if it seemed a little... extreme."

Trunks gave him a dry look. "He's been 'extreme' whenever you're around since her birthday, Cumber," he said, and stood.

Cumber sighed. "We're wasting time." He looked up, and saw the answering look in Trunks' eyes. Casually, they both ducked when a chair came flying from the living room over their heads.

"The dream," said Trunks; and Cumber nodded.

Neither one was crazy. Somehow, that was a relief.

"What do we do?"

Trunks looked like the very words caused him pain. "We wait."

More sounds of fighting came from the other room, as well as the sounds of Bulma shouting over both men. It seemed Trunks was right; there was nothing to do right now but wait.

* * *

Two male voices. Bright light. Hard table. One hell of a headache.

...what in the world?

"I tell you, this is NOT her."

"But the alpha signs are positive. It's her."

"But... LOOK at her. She's not even fully Saiyan. She's like... some sort of half breed, and you know none of them would have done that - especially _her_."

"I don't care. We got her. That's all that matters."

"...Uhn?" Bra said, vaguely aware that her voice was so thick and groggy she sounded hungover.

"Aw, shit, she's awake -"

"I told you to use three cc's!"

"I DID, man!"

Bra opened her eyes. Before her stood the two males she'd heard speaking, both of whom were humanoid and wearing what appeared to be radiation suits. "Okay," she said, noting with growing displeasure that her arms were tied down. "I'm going to give you two idiots thirty seconds to untie me and start with a good explanation. And if it ISN'T a good one - "

Ki suddenly shot out from her body, pulsing in arced waves that knocked over test tubes and sent papers flying. The entire room - white, stark, and empty except for a few tables covered with equipment - shook hard, and then suddenly, she was free. Her bonds, unable to take the combined strain of her muscle growth and energy flare, burst neatly apart; she leapt from the table, complete at the level of Ultimate Super Saiyajin, and smiled like her father.

" - then I'm going to kill you both." She cracked her knuckles. "Who's first?"

Both men stared at her in silence, only their huge eyes showing through the faceplates of their matching white bodysuits.

"Oh, I think you can do better than THAT," she said, taking a step; and that would be when the barrier came down.

It was rather fortunate that Bra's progress hadn't taken her any further forward; the forcefield that came down cut the very tips off her sneakers, and certainly brought her pause. "What the hell..."

The man on the right slowly lifted his hand and tapped the side of his face plate. Bra tensed, ready for anything.

The man blinked. "...it's gone."

The man on the left stared at him. "WHAT?"

"Gone. Entirely gone. Like it was never there."

"Oh, like HELL it is..." and then he, too, touched his face plate, with similar beeping results. "Oh, gods..." the second man moaned, honestly sounding horrified. "Oh, gods, they're gonna kill us..."

"ExCUSE ME!" Bra said, and stamped her foot. The stamping itself wasn't terribly extraordinary; the burst of power accompanying it, however, which shook the room and temporarily shorted out the lights, certainly was. "If I HAVE to blow up this entire damned room to get your attention, I WILL!"

Both men stared at her for a moment; then finally, the one on the right broke down and answered her.

"You're not Chive anymore," he said miserably, and Bra blinked slowly.

"...huh?" she replied, but they never explained further. Without waiting another moment, they flipped some switches and Bra was surrounded by blue. It was shiny, glass-like - impentrable; and moments after it came down around her, she passed out and crumbled onto the floor -

And then she woke up, and had no idea where she was.

She recognized the cold, damp lumps beneath her back as being good old Mother Earth, and she guessed the parts that poked her skin were sheared stalks of some sort of grain. That was fine; she'd slept outside before. The problem, simply put, was that she had no idea why she was outside _now_.

Her memory was completely scrambled.

Being trained by her father helped; she maintained her slow breathing pattern and relaxed heart rate, and simply tried to listen and feel for anything that might be around her. When her search revealed only field mice and a lot of bugs, she grew enough courage to open her eyes and sit up.

This was literally in the middle of nowhere. Fields, recently harvested down to nubs, stretched out as far as she could see in every direction. There was possibly a line of telephone poles far off to the south, but other than that, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Gaaah," Bra said, and scrambled to her feet. Quickly, she checked herself over; no wounds, no bleeding, no conspicuous alterations other than the dirt in her hair, but she couldn't think clearly. Could. Not. Think. For obvious reasons, she was a little frightened, and so did the first thing that came to mind.

_Papa! _she cried mentally, leaping high into the air just in case whatever had done this to her was under the ground; and for just half a moment, she was frightened enough to worry that she'd forgotten how to fly.

Of course, she hadn't; but panic knows no reason.

A moment passed without any noticeable response, and then suddenly, Gokuu appeared before her.

"Hi, Bra!" he said cheerfully, and lunging, Bra grabbed his shoulders.

"Ow," Gokuu said, looking confused.

"Take me home. NOW," Bra commanded, sounding equal parts both her mother and father.

Gokuu shrugged. "Okay," he said, and did. In their hurry, neither of them noticed that the grain around her had been flattened in a perfect oval.

* * *

Bulma was having a very odd day, indeed. Half of her house was ruined; it was going to take thousands of dollars and far too many man-hours to fix, and she was not feeling particularly pleased about it. To boot, it seemed that the reason her house was a mess was because Bra had gone missing. This would be a reason for concern, yes; however, the errant daughter had been found and brought back safely.

So, problem solved, right?

Wrong.

"Where were you?!" Vejiita demanded of Bra, growling dangerously and ignoring anyone else who tried to help.

"Bra... you're okay..." someone began.

"WHERE WERE YOU!?" Vejiita demanded again.

Bra had been shaken terribly, but she was also a teenager and Vejiita's daughter-by-blood; when growled at, she reacted in a similar way. "That's none of your business!" she snarled back; and then enough was simply enough, and Bulma decided to take steps.

"QUIEEEEET!"

Sudden and powerful silence descended on the ruined kitchen. Order had been restored, and Bulma was going to keep it that way. "You," Bulma said, pointing at Cumber. "Why are you here?"

Wide-eyed, Cumber simply replied with the truth; he'd never been terribly good at lies on the spur of the moment. "I'm here because in a dream, Dende told me Bra was in trouble."

Bulma digested that for a moment. "Okay," she said. "You," she pointed at Gokuu. "Why are YOU here?"

"Because Cumber was acting funny," Gokuu replied, which made enough sense. Bulma sighed.

"You," she said, pointing at her son. "What do you know about this?"

"I had the same dream, okaasan," he said quietly, covered in plaster dust and watching his father warily for signs of new violence.

"Okay, that isn't good," Bulma said, and glared at Vejiita. "YOU are going to clean up this mess. And you," she said, turning to Bra, having nothing else to say to her husband, "had better tell me what happened that has you covered with dirt and appearing randomly in my kitchen in Gokuu's arms at 7:30 in the morning."

"Kakarotto - " Vejiita started, apparently deciding for some reason that Gokuu was now the enemy in place of Cumber. Bulma swatted him, and he went silent.

"I don't know." Bra stood still, surrounded by people who currently held her as her focus, and it pained her visibly that she could not produce a better reply. "I'm sorry, okaasan. There were two... guys," she said, her brow knit in concentration. "And I think we were in space."

Gokuu concentrated. "Ooh, I think I found them!" he said cheerfully.

"Someone. Is. Fucking. DEAD," Vejiita replied, and flew out of the room.

"Hey, wait!" Gokuu said, and flew after him.

"...aw, hell," Trunks muttered, and followed. Cumber looked like a deer in the road.

Bulma sighed. "We'd better call the doctor," she said, and went to the other room to find an unsmashed phone.

* * *

It was all so quick - a study in utter efficiency. Vejiita found the ship; Gokuu found Vejiita. The latter happened none too soon; Dende was already metaphorically pulling his hair out, but the rules of Kami were simple and finite, and there was nothing he could really do. Groaning as he watched Gokuu barely prevent Vejiita from blowing the vessel into so many particles, Dende straightened and padded back to the room that doubled as his kitchen.

The vessel was roughly shoe-shaped, elongated and not quite symmetrical. It might have been armed, but the earth warriors would never have the chance to find out; Gokuu transported in, grabbed both men and transported them to earth - and then Vejiita blew up the ship.

Trunks tried to stop him; more the pity.

Dende sighed. With the air of an alcoholic who had long resisted the call, Dende reached into a special cabinet and pulled out a bottle of expensive imported water from Kenya. It was a an indulgence, it was true; but he needed something stronger than local stuff to get him through this.

Chugging a little, Dende made his way back the observation platform and resumed concentration, rubbing the side of his head.

"Mr. Dende?" Popo queried, following behind. He spotted the Kenya-water bottle in Dende's hand and sighed. "It is that bad, sir?"

"It is," Dende said, switching hands so he could rub his other temple. "An unexpected factor just exploded, and I honestly don't see how it could -"

"BIIIIINGO!" shouted Reep, abruptly bounding into view and startling Dende so much he almost dropped his bottle.

"Reep!" he said, clutching it to his chest. "Don't... don't DO that!"

Reep was immediately apologetic. "Oh, Dende-san, I didn't mean to frighten you." And the strange creature fawned at his feet, looking at Dende with big, mournful eyes.

_Who could stay mad at that? _Dende thought dryly. "It's all right, Reep. Now what do you mean, 'bingo?'"

"Oooh!" Reep said, and resumed his bounding. "These are the extra needed! Get the ball rolling they do, and then the end will come!"

Dende's color lightened at least two shades. "End?" For obvious reasons, that word carried connotations Dende did not care to explore.

"Of the Romance!" Reep exclaimed, and went bounding down the walkway, flinging his legs in all directions as if they had no joints.

Dende's left eye twitched.

"Relax, Mr. Dende, sir," Popo soothed, patting his kami on the shoulder. "They'll work it out. They always do."

"Yes, I know, I KNOW, but... " Dende sighed and sat, face resting despondently in his hands. "The child is going to be so IMPORTANT, Mr. Popo; I don't know what we're going to do if they mess it up."

"Find another way, sir," Popo said wisely, and took the Kenya water away. "I think you should take a nap."

Dende hesitated, then acquiesced. "You're right. It's been a couple of days, after all." And not even trying to observe more on earth, Dende allowed Popo to lead him to his small bedroom, where the faithful servant tucked him in and bid him goodnight.

Dende slept, and dreamed of better things.


	4. Chapter 4

_(Author's note: This story takes place after Dominion: Reprise. If you haven't read that fic, then this won't make a whole lot of sense to you. :) If you have, on the other hand, then I hope you enjoy this pointless, silly, romantic little tale.  
-Trin)_

**_ Love's Labours Won: a Love Story, part four _**

The two gentlemen "rescued" from the erstwhile spaceship could not, as it turned out, breathe oxygen. They inhaled some sort of strange hydrogen-methane combination and exhaled pure nitrogen, both of which sent Bulma into fits of scientific joy/frustration, but only mattered to the Z-warrios insomuch as it meant the men could not remove their helmets. Their eyes stared wildly through their clear faceplates, wide, cat-pupilled, and terrified. They spoke Japanese (or at the very least came equipped with some damn good translators), but for all of that, they still couldn't explain what they had wanted with Vejiita's daughter.

"Yip!" cried the slightly taller alien. He did so because Vejiita had just "mistakenly" crushed the man's right foot.

"Easy, Vejiita," Bulma chided mildly, not believing for one moment that it was an accident but hardly inclined to tell him to stop. "Sorry about that," she told them, and smiled like a barracuda. "You wanted to do what with our daughter, again?"

"Nothing, nothing!" protested the shorter alien, fearing the flattened feet of his shipmate. Said shipmate whimpered. "We wanted Chive, and we found Chive, and then she wasn't there again, and we had your daughter instead, and she ruined our - gack." _Gack_ wasn't a thing. It was the sound one makes when one's throat is in the hand of the prince of all Saiya-jin.

"You told us that already," said Vejiita, who looked like he was enjoying this. He squeezed.

"Hhhhck," said the alien.

"You're going to tell us something we don't already know," Vejiita eludicated with great patience. "Then you are going to tell us even more. Once that's done, you'll find even more things to tell us. If you don't, I'm going to do this - " he squeezed. " - to your balls, until they come off, and then I will make you eat them." Proud of his little speech, the prince of all Saiya-jin stepped back, crossing his arms and grinning every bit as viciously as his wife.

Trunks's face was hidden behind his hands. "I am not related to these people," he muttered to Goten _sotto voce_.

"You're more related than I am," Goten replied with little logic but much feeling, and Gokuu hushed him.

Gokuu wasn't sure about this. It wasn't his daughter who had been (potentially) threatened, so he understood instinctively that he didn't have first dibs regarding these aliens. That didn't mean he had to like how it was being handled."Uh, Bulma?" he said, and was ignored.

"We didn't mean to get her at all!" said the taller alien, having recovered his facility of speech. Vejiita raised his hand warningly. "I mean to say," the alien rambled quickly, "that if we don't find Chive, all our people are going to be dead, and you don't want that, do you, I mean we looked you up and you're supposed to be GOOD guys, heh heh, eh heh..." He cringed.

"We are good guys!" Gokuu piped up, and Bulma shot him a glare that would, pike-like, have skewered a normal person.

"Our daughter is _not_ Chive," Bulma said decisively.

"Then where is she?" whined the second guy. "Our planet's gonna blow!"

"Maybe we should find out what they're talking about," Gokuu opined.

"Good," said Vejiita, ignoring his fellow Saiyan. "Then there won't be any of you left at all."

And to everyone's surprise (except possibly Vejiita's), the second alien began to cry. They were harsh, wracking sobs, a little too real to be funny, and some of the wrath left Bulma's gaze.

"...I suppose they didn't really hurt her," she relented.

"They could have!" Vejiita snapped.

"But what about your planet?" asked Gokuu, and - recognizing sympathy and potential aid - both aliens twisted in their seats to face him.

"It's gonna blow!" exclaimed the taller.

"Chive can fix it," mourned the shorter.

"But Chive's dead," Cumber finally spoke up from his position on the couch, and the shorter alien resumed his sobbing.

"So WHAT?" Vejiita shouted; this situation was rapidly spinning out of his control. "What is wrong with you? So they cried! So what! That makes them no less evil!"

"But we're NOT evil!" protested the tall one.

"Yes you are!" Vejiita stated.

"Maybe they're not, Vejiita," Gokuu replied, finally moving to come between them. "Okay. So... tell us what's going on with your planet, okay? And what'djoo need Chive for anyway?"

The cat-eyed aliens glanced at each other; the short one sniffled. "You tell him," he said, and so the taller one did.

Alpha Epsilon was a simple planet, technologically advanced but politically lucid. Sure, it was a feudal system, but everybody liked it, and there was food to go around. Unfortunately, the volcanos changed all that.

Nobody ever quite figured out what caused the mountains to start blowing their literal tops. The first year it happened, it was just something strange that had people curious, but not terribly concerned. No one lived near the lava flows. People were slightly concerned the second year, but as the eruptions simply continued unabated, that concern faded quickly. The third year, they were apathetic; it didn't even warrant news anymore, and after a decade or so, the constantly flowing volcanoes simply became a funny thing that the planet did. Since any worries about pollution had been abandoned centuries before when the Alpha Epsilonians perfected solar power, nobody thought to test what this planet-nausea might really be doing.

"The faults showed up right around then," said the taller alien, head down with his arms limply on his thighs. He looked like he was reciting a funeral dirge.

"Faults?" asked Trunks.

"Yeah. In the ground. Huge cracks, just... splitting open, and at first it happened out in the desert and nobody cared, but then one opened under the sea, and the whole thing got drained - "

"That's impossible!" snapped Bulma, who was apparently doing calculations in her head as this was explained.

"I know. Our scientists said the same thing," moaned the shorter alien, finally deciding to chime in. "But it was anyway no matter what people said, because it happened. All the water just... just was gone, in only a couple of months. Oh gods, the smell... all the fish and whales and seaweed and seapeople... oh gods. It was like a corpse-pit."

Cumber suddenly jumped so abruptly that some of his bloodied bandages - which had begun to stick to the sofa - peeled right off his skin. "YOW!"

Everybody was staring at him. "What?" said Goten.

"N-nothing," Cumber said, inhaling between his teeth as he lay back again. Vejiita smirked.

"A lesson learned, Kyuujinshu-jin," he intoned with dire timbre.

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Go on," she said, ignoring her husband.

The taller alien did.

The ocean disappearing was only the first of many unspeakable tragedies. It was impossible, but the planet seemed to be vomiting itself to death. Social programs were tried, patches were attempted; nothing worked. By the year AV 21 (time was counted in After Volcano years at this point), the air was beginning to grow poisonous. Gasses and ash released into the atmosphere were destroying the entire ecological system, and food was beginning to be dangerously scarce. Water had to be tested before it could be drunk, and it was just when the government was seriously considering trying to evacuate the planet's entire population that Chive's ship arrived.

"She came alone," said the taller alien in tones usually reserved for religious icons, oblivious to the repulsed look on the faces of his audience. "And with her came all the answers we never needed."

It was just a small ship, one of the stolen Saiyan scouters. She'd come wearing a mask to allow her to breathe, and - here the alien was a little vague on details - descended on their government, reorganized it, built a machine that stopped the planet's constant nausea, and then simply went away again.

"She did what?" asked Cumber with an odd look on his face, so the taller alien repeated it. "But that makes no sense," Cumber said immediately afterward.

"Why not? It's what happened!" the shorter alien insisted.

Cumber shifted in his seat. Once again, everyone was staring at him, and he felt too uncomfortable to speak. To his surprise, Bra did for him.

"Because all Chive ever intended to do was steal what technology might be useful to her and leave again," she said, and now everyone was staring at _her_. "It's what the Kyuujinshu did. Where else do you think they got half the crap they used on us?"

"Bra..." said Bulma in a strange tone of voice. Her daughter sat languidly on the arm of the chair, an expression of cool disinterest in her eyes, as though she were bored. Grace lay pantherlike in her pose, and at that exact moment, Bulma wasn't completely sure she was looking at her daughter at all.

"She's right." Cumber sounded forlorn. "That's all they did. We did. I... they often killed people while they were doing it, so I don't know why she would do this."

"...we?" asked the shorter alien in a dazed tone.

"That is a good question," said Trunks with a frown. "You know something? This might bear visiting. I mean, we'll need some serious equipment so we can breathe, but I think we should go check it out."

"We?" repeated the shorter alien a little bit louder.

"What? Fly to a dying planet? Are you out of your mind?" demanded Vejiita, who was staring at his son as if the lavender-headed man had gone quite mad.

"We?" said the taller alien this time.

"We," Cumber replied, and the taller alien abruptly flung himself past Vejiita and onto the floor.

"PLEASE!" he cried, kowtowing to great dramatic effect. "Help us! Aid us, oh friend of Chive! Save our planet before we all - "

"Oh, _please,_" Bra said, and in those two simple words, ice stabbed like knives. "You really think he could help you? He can't. Nobody can - but me."

Heads swung in her direction again, like following the action at a bizarre tennis match. "What?" asked Vejiita.

"You heard me." Bra crossed her arms.

"Because... you have Chive's memories?" Bulma said hopefully, not really liking where this was headed.

"Yes," said Bra, and Vejiita sat down hard.

"All her memories?" he asked in a spooked sort of voice, which earned him a funny look from his wife.

"Yep. We're wasting time. Can we go now?" said Bra, and the taller alien - carefully judging which way the wind was blowing - crawled over to her on his knees and resumed kowtowing, this time directly in front of her jean-clad knees.

"Please! Please oh lady-whom-is-not-Chive! Please come and help us! Please!" And at that exact moment, Piccolo walked in through the door.

"What on earth is going on in here?" he said, staring at the wrecked room, the two strangers, the odd behavior.

"Yeah," Gokuu agreed, which seemed to sum it up for everyone - everyone, that is, except for Trunks and Cumber. They knew what was going on. Dende had warned them what was going to happen, and now it was happening, and they looked at one another. They didn't know whether to stop this or not.

"I guess we're going to space," said Bulma in the thick silence that followed; both the aliens cheered. "I'd better get some breathing apparatuses ready," she said, mentally making a list as she walked to her lab.

No one spoke in her absence.


End file.
